In From the Cold
by signpost
Summary: Complete. One cold, snowy night, Sarah unwittingly opens her window and lets in an old friend. And, boy, do these two ever have some unfinished business to attend to... (JS)
1. one

Sarah couldn't remember another day nearly as cold as this one; she had taken a shower after gym class, as usual, but she sorely regretted it by the time she arrived at home fifteen minutes later, her long hair frozen into icy dreadlocks.

At the sight of her, her stepmother let out a gasp.  "Oh, Sarah, you look _ghastly_!"

"Th—thanks for noticing," Sarah stuttered, her teeth chattering.  At least she had made it home before the encroaching storm had time to take hold, though the sky was already ominously dark.

"Well, get upstairs and into a hot shower! Before you—"

"—catch my death of cold, I know," Sarah muttered under her breath, clomping towards the stairs.

With a cry of dismay, her stepmother grabbed Sarah's shoulder.  "Take off your wet boots before you walk on the carpet!"

Sarah smiled lopsidedly, bending over and struggling with her heavy boots.  "God forbid that it looks like anyone lives here, huh, Karen?"

The older woman sighed.  "For heaven's sake, what fault could you possibly find with my trying to keep a clean house?"

"Nothing," Sarah replied distractedly, managing to slip one boot off.  It fell to the ground with a thud, where it lay with a little pool of melting snow and dirt around it.  "Sorry, it's been a long day."

"Anything you want to talk about, dear?"

"No, thanks," Sarah grunted, pulling off the other boot and sending it to lie besides its companion.  It wasn't that she hated Karen; on the contrary, she'd grown to have a certain amount of appreciation for all of the juggling her stepmother had to do: between accounting, keeping house, taking care of a toddler, and keeping a husband and moody teenage stepdaughter happy, Sarah was sometimes surprised that Karen didn't just throw her hands in the air and give up.  It was just that there were certain things that Karen couldn't understand, and Sarah had learned through experience that it was more worthwhile to go take a nap than to talk herself blue in the face trying to explain things.

"All right, well, have a good shower, and try not to wake Toby."

"No problem," Sarah waved a tired hand, trudging up the stairs.  Even if Karen hadn't mentioned it, she would have tried not to wake Toby anyway.  He was going through terrible twos and seemed to have a grand time running around screaming at the top of his little lungs.

Inside the bathroom, with the door closed and locked behind her, Sarah turned the bathtub faucet on all the way up and began pulling wet, cold clothes off.  As warm steam began filling the small room, she sighed happily, feeling as though her bones were finally beginning to thaw.

So eager was she for the warmth, she climbed into the tub right away, letting the hot water grow deeper and deeper around her, rather than do what she usually did, which was to wait until the tub was full to brimming to climb in, so that she could saver it all at once.

As the water slowly crept up around her still-goose-pimpled flesh, she closed her eyes and let her mind wander.  She hadn't been lying when she'd told Karen that it had been a long day.  Nothing particularly bad had happened at school today, it was just that she hadn't managed to sleep a wink last night, and had spent the entire day struggling to keep her eyes open.  Of course, her sadistic math teacher, Ms. James, had noticed, and had sharply asked Sarah up to the board to solve a particularly evil calculus problem.  Normally, Sarah liked math: it was something about the way that each new thing she learned was just a step on the way to something much more immense and complicated.  For some reason, mathematics reminded her of the Labyrinth.  During those thirteen hours she had spent wandering though that world of goblins and magic, though she had been utterly focused on her task, hadn't been able to ignore that feeling deep inside her that she was on the edge of something entirely new and just beyond her understanding.  That something had always just been over the next hill, behind the next wall.  Whatever it was, she had been on the verge of something great.

Of course, she had rescued Toby and returned home and had never found what it was that she had felt.  It had almost felt like she had been standing on the edge of a cliff, arms spread to fly, ready to jump once she knew that someone would catch her at the bottom.  For the last two years, Sarah had had the unsettling feeling that she was still standing at the edge of that high cliff, the wind pushing at her from behind, and if she didn't find what she wanted, she would lose her balance and fall, whether there were strong arms waiting to catch her or not.

Ever since the Labyrinth, she had dedicated herself to secrets.  She had tried religion and mysticism, she had tried science, wanting to expose the mysteries of the world around her and beyond, and she had tried psychology, hoping to delve into the secrets of the mind.  Strangely enough, none of those had made her feel quite as much on the verge of a discovery as math had.  So she had started study mathematics with a vigor that impressed both her parents and her teachers.  Though she had always been an average student, she began to excel in math and as her grades in that class shot up, she was moved from one level to another until she was a top achiever in AP Calculus as a junior in high school.

Noticing that the tub was beginning to be overfull, she reached over to the spigot and turned it off, then sank down into the water with a groan, the last of the chill being banished from her body.

Sarah's mind flashed back to earlier that day.  She had been standing at the chalkboard, dusty chalk in hand, yawning to herself and mentally working out the most efficient way to solve the problem.  Ms. James had been standing right behind her, arms crossed, waiting for Sarah to make her first move.  She had touched the chalk to the dark surface of the chalkboard, ready to write the first in a long string of equations, when suddenly she paused. 

"What is it, Sarah?" Ms. James had asked, her vulture-like eyes catching the slightest hesitation.  "Can't you do it?"

"That's not it," was Sarah's reply.  "I can do it, but that's not it."  As Ms. James watched in surprise, Sarah gently set down the chalk, walked back to her seat, and quietly sat down.  The whole class had stared at her in disbelief, but Sarah simply stared straight forward and ignored them.

Though Ms. James had been quite put out, there was really no way that she could force Sarah to do the problem, so after a moment's angry silence, she had called someone else up to the board.  Sarah had stayed very quiet for the rest of the day, her mind a confusing jumble, but her schedule too busy to sort anything out.

Now, lying quietly in the tub with nothing to do and nowhere to go, she was free to pick apart what had happened.  Frankly, she was every bit as confused with herself as the rest of the class and Ms. James had been.  What had happened?

Furrowing her brow, she thought back to that moment at the blackboard and tried to remember what had made her pause.  Whatever it had been, it had to have been something important, she knew, but she just couldn't put her finger on it.  It was like trying to grab a piece of wet soap: every time she thought she had it, it slipped away, as though it had never been there.  She had the vaguest impression of a pair of haughty eyes, one brown, one blue, but she didn't know anyone with eyes like that, and couldn't imagine what possible bearing they could have on her situation.

With a sigh, Sarah pulled on the bathtub's stopper and climbed out.  As she wrapped herself in a towel and vigorously rubbed at her long hair with another towel until it hung damply around her shoulders.  One thing she did know, whatever the thought had been, it had whispered to her that math was not the answer.  All of her number crunching and theorizing would all come to nothing, because what she was looking for was not within the capacity of the brain.  As she had stood at the front of the class, thunderstruck, the certainty that math would not give her what she wanted reverberated within her, and a sudden sadness had descended over her.  _If that wasn't it_, she had wanted to cry, _then I'm utterly lost and without a clue!_

Gathering up her damp clothes and opening the bathroom door, she snuck down the hall past Toby's room, stepping over the creaky spot under the carpet with the ease born of close to three years of experience. 

Safely in her room with nary a protesting screech from her little brother, she closed the door with a quiet click and breathed a sigh of relief.  Though she no longer battled with her father and Karen the way she used to, her room was still her refuge.  It was no longer as chock-full of _things_ as it used to be, but she had kept everything that really mattered to her.  The _Cats_ poster was gone, but the M.C. Escher print remained.  Her stuffed animals had gone down into storage or into Toby's room, but the music box still held a place of honor on her shelf.  And though she kept it carefully hidden, the little red book with the letters _The Labyrinth_ embossed in gold on the cover was wrapped in a scarf and placed behind her mirror.

Sarah looked out the window and saw with a sigh that while she had been bathing and thawing her cold bones, the threatening storm had made itself at home, and snow was already blowing outside.  At least it was a Friday and she didn't need to fight her way through the snow drifts to school the next day.  Not caring that it was only just after five in the afternoon and she wouldn't be going to sleep for several more hours at least, she pulled the shade firmly down and pulled on her black flannel pajamas.    

Sometimes she missed her vaguely gothic, filmy white nightgowns (that she only wore with her bedroom door locked, of course), but then other days, like today, she was quite happy for the soft, warm fuzziness of flannel.  Though it felt like it had been close to forever, it really hadn't been all that long ago that she would have stubbornly put on one of those nightgowns, preferring to shiver all night and look like a princess in a tower than to wear something so androgynous.  

She walked over to her desk and grabbed a black hair band, absent-mindedly twisting her hair up into a bun, grateful to have the damp weight off of the back of her neck.  Looking at herself in the mirror, she sighed.  She was almost seventeen, and while she knew that technically she was still quite young, sometimes she could almost feel herself getting older.  Most of the time, she just went with the flow of life, but every so often – like now – she would step away and take a look at herself.  At those times, it almost horrified her that she wasn't more saddened at the changes in herself.  Though she still felt a deep yearning within herself to find the great secrets of life, whatever they might be, she found herself living much more in the same world that other people lived in.  The world in her head was still there and still more interesting than most of daily life, but she just didn't have much time to go there anymore.  

It had been months and months since she'd seen Hoggle, Ludo, and Didymus; she hadn't had time for them either, and part of her was starting to wonder if she'd ever really been able to call them to her, if, indeed, any of it had happened.  She didn't like it, but she'd admitted to herself that it was entirely possible that she'd created them all out of her mind.  When Sarah truly let herself get swept up in something, whether it was real or not, it would become real to her.  If, indeed, this was what had happened with the Labyrinth, it wouldn't have been the first time she'd created memories for herself that hadn't really existed.  As a child, she'd created happy memories of her real mother and repeated them to herself so often that she'd honestly come to believe that they were really true.  Until her father had dragged her to a child psychologist and he'd helped her remember how things really were with her mother, she'd refused to even consider the chance that they were false memories.

Turning away from the mirror, no longer willing to look, she pulled the shades on her window back up, wanting nothing more than to turn the lights off, lie down, and watch the snow piling up outside by the soft light of the streetlamp.  

Abruptly, Sarah let out a gasp.  There was a face outside her window, looking in at her.  Even as she instinctively recoiled, she laughed nervously, recognizing it.

It was the white owl.

Though she hadn't seen it in several weeks, it was a constant companion outside her window.  It watched her while she read, it watched her while she listened to music and danced around her room, and she wouldn't have been surprised to learn that it watched her while she slept.  Though she didn't know why the owl spent so much time outside her window, it always filled her with reassurance, as well as a strange sadness that she couldn't understand.

Feeling an odd kinship to the creature draped in white feathers outside her window, she smiled, a bit uncertainly, and gently touched her hand to the frosted glass of the window.  It blinked back at her, its eyes round.

"Hello," Sarah said quietly, knowing that she was being ridiculous, that it couldn't possibly hear her through the glass, and even if it could, it wouldn't understand her. 

The owl hooted softly as snowflakes caught in its soft feathers.

"How have you been?" Sarah asked, trying to banish the suspicion that she had gone utterly mad, to be talking to an owl as though it would talk back.  "I haven't seen you around much."

Though the owl cocked its head curiously to the side, there was no response.  Suddenly, Sarah wanted to laugh at herself.  _What were you expecting?_ she asked herself.  _A dissertation from an owl? Don't be absurd._  With a final embarrassed smile, she took her hand off the glass, leaving a handprint with steamed glass around the outlines of where her fingers had been.

Turning away from the window and the owl, she walked over to her bed, her feet shuffling along the carpet, and tugged the down comforter down far enough to climb in.  Before she could hop onto her bed, though, the owl hooted loudly outside her window, causing her head to swing around automatically as her eyes widened in surprise.

The bird had moved from the branch of the tree to sit on the sill just outside her window, but that was not what caught her attention.  Her eyes were drawn to the window itself, where a second, larger handprint now rested beside her own.

Sarah swallowed hard, suddenly frightened.  She couldn't fathom how the second handprint had gotten there, and since her handprint was already fading, it had to be fresh, made within the last several seconds.  The only explanation she could think of was that there was someone out there... right outside her window.

Her first instinct was to scream as loud as she could and bring Karen running, but when she opened her mouth, her voice seemed to have died in the back of her throat, as all that emerged was a terrified squeak.  Her second instinct was to either make a break for the door or hide under her covers and shiver, hoping that whoever it was would go away without hurting her.  The bed being closest, it seemed like the best option.

She dove for the mattress and burrowed under the warm down, where she lay shaking and trying as hard as she could to pretend that she didn't exist, that the blanket was lying flat, as though no one was lying underneath it.  Clapping her hands over her mouth, she tried to breathe quietly, but her constricted vocal cords only allowed loud, wheezing gasps out of her mouth.

This state of absolute panic continued for several minutes.  However, it soon became extremely stifling under the comforter, and the fact that she hadn't heard so much as a sound, let alone the crashing of breaking glass, prompted Sarah to ever-so-slowly peek out from below the heavy weight of the down and pray that she wouldn't see some deranged lunatic leering down at her.

When a first quick scan of the room revealed nothing unusual, she swallowed and looked over to the window, a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Though she had half been expecting to see some modern-day Jack the Ripper crouched outside her window, a glittering knife in his hand, she was relieved to see nothing more than the owl, who hadn't moved.  The handprints had faded, as though they had never been.

Within her foggy mind, things began to clear and take shape again, letting coherent thoughts through.  The first thing that Sarah realized was that if there was anyone nearby, the owl would have flown away; she had done some reading on owls a while ago, back when it had first started showing up outside her window, and she had learned that owls were notoriously shy and would fly away the second anyone approached.

"You would, wouldn't you?" she whispered past the lump in her throat.  "You'd fly away.  So...how did that handprint...? Did I just imagine it?"

For its part, the owl only blinked solemnly at her now tousled head, still just peeking out from under the bedspread.

Feeling as though something strange, something she wouldn't be able to explain was about to happen, she slowly eased herself out from under the comforter and approached the window, wishing fervently that her hopes of there being no homicidal maniac were not in vain.  As she rested her hands against the sides of the window and scanned what she could see of the snowy vista, it seemed ever more likely that they weren't.

Inches away, on the other side of the glass, the owl regarded her and hooted again.  Sarah looked at it closely for the very first time.

"You don't look so well," she said softly.  Up close, she could see that the owl's feathers were tattered, that it was skinnier than it should have been, and though it had no expression on its round face, that it was far colder than any animal with a thick coat of feathers had a right to be.

As she looked at the owl, a crazy idea took hold in her head.  It was a bad idea, extremely dangerous, probably wouldn't work anyway, and could get her the biggest punishment that her father and Karen could possibly devise.  But on the other hand...

Telling herself firmly that the owl would startle and fly away the second she opened the window, Sarah lowered her hands to the window latch.  However, she was once again surprised when, despite the window frame sticking at places, resulting in her slamming it open with a good deal more force than was needed, the owl didn't move.  It just blinked at her with eyes that, now that she wasn't looking at them through a pane of glass, looked dull and glazed.

Although there was now a cold wind and a great deal of snow blowing into her bedroom, she ignored those and looked concernedly at the owl.  "You can come in," she said.

It didn't move.

Sarah closed her eyes briefly, feeling stupid again.  Of course it didn't move.  It was an owl.  Owls didn't speak English.  That left her with only one recourse.  _It's going to bite and scratch and panic!_ the logical voice inside her cried.  _And you're going to wind up with all of your stuff broken! This can only end in tears._

Ignoring that voice for all she was worth, Sarah held her breath and reached out to gather up the owl in her arms.  Though her muscles tensed in anticipation of resistance, the owl, which was heavier than it looked, meekly allowed her to pick it up and bring it inside the room.

"You're shivering," Sarah said unhappily, hugging the owl's soft body tightly, trying to warm it up.  She carried it over to her bed and gently deposited it on top of the rumpled comforter, then dashed back to the window and closed it.  The room immediately began to reheat.  When she glanced at the owl, it was moving slowly, lowering its head and pulling at the blanket, clearly trying to accomplish something.

Sarah watched in confusion for a moment, then laughed.  "Oh," she said, "you're trying to climb under the covers.  Here, let me help you with that."  She sat down on the bed and held up a corner of the blanket so that the owl could scurry under it, which it did.  Watching the lump that was the owl stumble around under the heavy comforter, hooting softly to itself, she had to laugh again.  "It's okay," she said reassuringly.  "You're safe now.  Unless you want to, you don't have to go outside again until the snow's stopped."

The owl made a sound that had a distinctly relieved edge to it.  Suddenly suspicious, she lifted up the blanket till she could see its face.  Though Sarah squinted, its eyes remained no more than black circles in its white face.  Just an owl.  She didn't know why it seemed to understand her, why it hadn't flown away, why it had allowed her to pick it up, but it had to be just an owl.  Allowing the blanket to drop again, she sat down next to the bed.

After the excitement of the last several minutes, Sarah was beginning to feel distinctly sleepy.  She leaned her head back against the mattress and spoke drowsily to the owl.  "I wish I knew why it seems like you can understand me, but I don't suppose that I ever will."  A tired smile played on her features.  "I sure hope you stay quiet.  Karen would kill me if she knew that I let a wild animal into the house."

"Wild animal or no, I have no desire to make much noise," a clipped voice answered behind her.

Sarah's head snapped up with a gasp as she twisted her head around and frantically scooted away from the bed.  As her back pressed against the wall next to her desk, the owner of the voice shoved the blanket to the side and rose to his feet.

He was the most unusual looking man she'd ever seen: he was tall and slender.  His blond hair was several different lengths; at its longest, it reached his elbows.  The clothes he wore were like something out of some Renaissance Faire.  Mostly a mix between faded white and cream, his blouse and tight pants were covered with a cape of feathers and bones.  His face could only be described as "sharp": though it was pale and drawn, his mouth was firm, his teeth pointed, his nose aquiline, his cheekbones harsh, and his eyes... Beneath deeply tilted eyebrows, his eyes burned with a feverish light, one blue, one brown.

Stumbling to her feet, Sarah stared at him with a sudden jolt of recognition.  "You..." she breathed.  "I've seen you before, haven't I?"

He smiled arrogantly, though weariness lurked not far beneath the surface.  "Considering the nature of the favors I performed for you, I should say so, yes."

She held a hand to her head, a sudden flash of dizziness making her blink hard.  "It was your eyes, wasn't it? That I saw today during class."

"I haven't the foggiest idea."

"And you're...the owl?"

He snorted.  "Yes, Sarah.  I am 'the owl.'"

As she clutched the desk, a wave of disjointed memories flickered in front of her eyes.  Unsteadily, she said again, "I've seen you before.  I saw you in... in the Labyrinth.  How could I have forgotten?"  He shrugged smoothly, the bones of his shoulders showing through the top of his cape.  "You're...you're _Jareth_!" she said triumphantly as something finally clicked.  "You're Jareth," she repeated slowly, now remembering more about him than his name.  "Jareth, the Goblin King."

Jareth bowed elegantly, his smile showing his pointed teeth.  "The same."  Sarah's glance darted nervously towards the door.  Seeing the direction of her gaze and correctly interpreting it, he said, "There is no need to worry.  Your little brother is quite safe.  Even if you were to wish him gone again, I could not take him."

As she gazed at him questioningly, whatever reserves of strength had been holding him upright seemed to disappear, causing him to blink several times, looking almost surprised, and collapse backwards onto the bed, where he lay silently.


	2. two

With a gasp, Sarah rushed over to the bed, but she stopped short of actually touching him, and resigned herself to hovering over him and listening quietly to make sure that he was still breathing.  Though his breath was shallow, it was steady.

She bit her lip, deciding that waking him yet might not be a good idea.  She needed time to think.  Firstly...how on earth had she ever forgotten him? For the last two years, whenever she'd remembered her experience in the Labyrinth, he hadn't been part of it.  What had she been thinking? Sarah screwed up her face; now that she remembered Jareth, it was hard to fathom how she could ever have imagined the Labyrinth without him.  He'd been such an essential part of it: the reason she was there, the obstacle in her path, the destination at the end, the one lingering regret.  She'd spent two years believing that the king of the goblins had been a small, shriveled, leather-colored, annoying, and frankly hideous goblin.  His seduction within the bubble ballroom had been laughable and his lascivious, last-ditch efforts to defeat her had been nothing short of ludicrous.  In her memories, the nameless Goblin King had been nothing more than annoyance.

And now, to be faced with this magnificent man and to suddenly remember the truth left her more than slightly overwhelmed.  

Of course, there was also the issue that the Goblin King was currently unconscious on her bed to deal with.  She needed to figure out why he was here and what on earth was wrong with him...and of course, how to get rid of him.  

She stared down at him again.  In her memory, he was intimidating, frightening, and infinitely powerful, a form of mystery.  The man before her held little resemblance to that mighty figure.  He looked drawn, tired, and all too small and human.  Looking down at his pale features, she suddenly felt a twinge of sadness.  Yes, he had been her adversary, and yes, she had rejoiced when he was defeated and had taken a special pleasure in speaking the words, "_You have no power over me_," but all the same, it didn't seem right for such a man to be reduced to this.

With that in mind, she was no longer scared.  The man on the bed was not to be feared; he was just a drained, sick man who had needed a place to come in from the cold.  Suddenly confident, Sarah reached out and touched his forehead confidently, feeling for a fever.  

When she gasped, feeling the heat of his forehead against her fingers, it was easy to ignore the fact that she would have once given nearly anything to be near him.  Despite the fact that he'd been out in the storm, he was burning up.  She turned around, quickly walked the few steps to her door, and stepped out into the hallway, closing the door behind her.

Sarah made it safely to the bathroom, where she rooted in the cabinets under the sink until she found a washcloth, which she proceeded to drench in lukewarm water and folded neatly.

Unfortunately, on the way back to her room, she forgot to avoid the creaking floor, and winced as the resulting noise brought stirring noises from Toby's room, which, she was sure, would shortly develop into screaming.

"Karen," she called softly into the master bedroom, "Toby's awake."

"Can you handle him, dear?"

Sarah bit her lip, slightly exasperated.  "At the moment, no... I'm working on a really important paper.  It's worth fifty percent of my grade in English."

"What paper is this?"

"Um, the one I told you about yesterday."

"Yesterday? You didn't tell me about any—"

But by then, it was too late.  Sarah had made it back to her room and was in the process of closing the door.  She locked the door and thanked her lucky stars that her father and Karen had finally agreed to install a lock on her door; they hadn't wanted to, feeling as though no one in their house should lock out anyone else, but when Toby had refused to stop trying to rummage through her room in the middle of the night and had even toddled into her room while she was getting dressed, they had at last seen the necessity of Sarah having a little guaranteed privacy.

Blocking out the sound of Karen's insistent voice, Sarah turned her attention back to Jareth, who hadn't moved.  Quickly returning to his side, she gently placed the washcloth on his forehead.  She was no doctor and knew next to nothing about taking care of people, but she did know that if someone had a high fever, getting their body to cool down a bit couldn't possibly be a bad thing.

While he lay silently on the bed, the damp washcloth looking incongruous on his exotic face, she next turned her attention to his clothes.  His blouse and tight pants didn't look like they would make him overheat much (and even if they would, she wasn't about to touch them), but she decided that she should take off his boots and his cape.

The boots were easy enough: she simply grabbed onto his feet and pulled.  They didn't want to slip off at first, but once she stopped blushing and straddled his legs to give herself leverage, they came right off, and she jumped away from him as quickly as she possibly could.  

Removing the cape, however, proved to be somewhat more difficult.  The clasp was nearly invisible and quite small, so she needed to squint and bring her face quite close to his neck in order to see how it worked.  Though she tried as hard as she could not to brush bare skin with her fingers or, indeed, to breathe, the slightest contact was impossible to avoid.  She was close enough to smell him: the scent of pine trees on a cold autumn day rose to tickle her nose.  His was a distinctive and heady scent, and breathing it in, she again wondered how she could ever have forgotten him.  Finally, Sarah's suddenly clumsy fingers managed to undo the little silver clasp and the feathery cape slid down from his shoulders.

She frowned.  She'd managed to get the cape unhooked, but it was still lying squarely under his body, and she wasn't quite sure how to deal with that.  After an awkward moment, she decided that merely having it off his shoulders would have to be satisfactory.  It had been hard enough to unclasp the thing, let alone managing to maneuver a very male and very heavy dead weight around to get it off the bed.

Then she looked again.  She'd forgotten about the protruding bones at the top of the cape, but they seemed to be digging into his back, and if he'd been awake, she was sure that he'd be in a good deal of pain.  So, really, she had no choice.

As gently as she could, and attempting to ignore the fact that she was essentially undressing a man, she slipped her arm under her shoulders and, with a bit of grumbling to herself, managed to raise his chest and shoulders high enough to slip the pointy part of the cape out from under him.  With one final grunt, she took hold of the cape and pulled as hard as she could.

That action produced some definite results: Sarah, with the cape securely in hand, went flailing backwards and landed squarely on her rear end.  Jareth, on the other hand, had not woken up, but the momentum of the cape sliding out from underneath him had flipped him over, and he was lying on his face, breathing down into the mattress.

"Oh, no," Sarah groaned.  With only the slightest wince to acknowledge her aching posterior, she bounded to her feet and, arriving back at the side of the bed, slid her arms around him and pulled again.

Getting him onto his back again turned out to be no easier than removing the cape had been, and a good deal more embarrassing.  By the time Sarah had him lying peacefully with the wet compress on his forehead again, she was red-faced and panting.

She sat down with her back against the bed frame, feeling utterly exhausted.  Though she told herself that she was only closing her eyes for a moment, that she wasn't going to fall asleep, having her eyes felt closed felt so good that she decided to keep them closed for a minute longer.  And a minute longer.  And that it really couldn't hurt anything to just doze for ten minutes.  Ten minutes.  Really.  Then she would open her eyes and check on Jareth again.

Sarah had never heard the proverb, "Time makes fools of us all," but if she had, at that moment, drifting off, she would have known exactly what the originator of it had been feeling.

When her eyes drifted open again, much later, she was so disoriented that she couldn't fathom why she'd fallen asleep on the floor.  But then she looked at the window, where Jareth was now sitting, and it all came flooding back.

She didn't want him to know yet that she was awake, so she kept her mouth closed and didn't move.  Instead, she just stared at him.

He was sitting on the sill with one leg pressed against the window frame, staring out the window with an expression that she couldn't name.  The orange light from the streetlamp illuminated the stark relief of his face, exemplifying just how slender he had become.  There was something so sad about his profile that she felt like weeping.

"I dislike charity," he said shortly.

Sarah flinched involuntarily.   How had he known that she was awake? "I beg your pardon?" she asked.

"I would sooner be dead than to have a child feel pity for me."  Though he didn't turn and meet her gaze, he was staring steadily at her through the reflection of the glass, which, she realized, he must have been doing all along.

She couldn't help but feel a little hurt.  Here she'd done her best to help him, even though he'd done absolutely nothing to deserve it, and the best he could muster up was words of scorn.  "Then I apologize for letting you inside in the first place," she replied in as curt a voice as she could manage.  "Perhaps we should rectify that.  Feel free to leave the same way you came in."

This time, he did turn his head and look at her.  "I said that I want no pity.  I did not say that I am not... grateful for your efforts."

"Well, are you?" Sarah was well aware that her question was nothing more than baiting, but she was still miffed.

"Answering that would seem slightly redundant."

"No, what you _said_ was that you're not ungrateful, but you never said that you _are_ grateful.  So, are you?"

Jareth sighed in vague irritation, "Good god, girl, I didn't come here to argue semantics with you."

"Then why did you come?" she shot back.  "To stare at me through the window? You know, people get arrested for less than that all of the time."

"And what an amusing phone call that would be. 'Hello, officer, there seems to be a bird staring at me.  Would you mind terribly if I asked you to lock it up?'"

"Now you're mocking me," she snapped.  "I don't see why I should have to put up with this in my own bedroom."

Seeming to sense that he was about to push her over the edge, and casting a nervous glance at the blizzard outside, he sighed and stood up.  Sketching a deep bow, he said, with only the slightest hint of irony in his voice, "I do apologize if I've offended you.  I promise that I shall behave quite perfectly from now on."

Sarah stretched and moved from sitting on the floor to sitting primly on her bed.  "Wow, you must really want to avoid going outside if you're willing to offer a genuine apology.  Well, genuine-sounding anyway."

Jareth's face darkened.  "No one would want to be outside in this weather."

She stared at him, at his nearly-emaciated frame, now clearly visible as the light from the streetlamp silhouetted him and cast his shadow across the floor.  "Especially you," she said flatly.  "What _happened _to you?"

Following her gaze, he gazed down at himself almost ruefully.  "You."

Sarah blinked, at first thinking that she must have heard him wrong.  When she wasn't able to convince herself of that, she laughed disbelievingly.  "_Me_? What could _I_ have done to make you look like you just stepped off the model runway in hell?"

He just looked at her, his eyes dull and humorless.  "You always did fancy yourself quite clever, Sarah.  However, for me, this is no laughing matter."  Jareth sat back down and stared out the window again.

A little bit of her anger melted.  He really did look quite forlorn.  "What happened, then?" she asked softly.  "How is it my fault?"

"You defeated me.  You looked me in the eye and said—" He couldn't hide a slight shudder.  "—said what you did."

"You mean, 'you have no p—"

"_Stop_!" Jareth hissed.  "Don't _say_ that."  He glared at her.

Ignoring his injured gaze, Sarah said, "So you expect me to believe that when the other people who mastered the Labyrinth defeated you, nothing happened, but as soon as I won, you lose thirty pounds?"

"There have been no others.  No one else has ever mastered the Labyrinth.  Only you."

"Just me?" she repeated in wonder.

"No one else ever made it half as far."

Feeling absurdly proud of herself, Sarah said, "Go on? After I said – what I did, what happened?"

"I lost everything," he said simply.

"What do you mean, 'everything'?"

"Everything.  The Labyrinth, my throne, my power, even my human body.  _Everything_."

"But _why_?" she cried.  Despite herself, she was beginning to feel very guilty.  Could this really have all been her fault? "Why would that happen? So you couldn't control me.  Why should that have made any difference?"

"The Labyrinth's not made to be beaten, Sarah," he replied softly.  "It's made to confound.  If it makes enough sense to someone to let them through, it means that something is terribly wrong with it.  When you defeated it – and me – it disappeared."

"What?" she breathed.  "How could that happen?"

"Stop with your 'how's and 'why's," he replied irritably.  "I thought that you had actually learned to stop questioning and just accept that sometimes things are what they are.  All you need to know is that the Labyrinth and its denizens are no more.  At least, not in any form that I can reach."

Her hand drifted up to cover her mouth.  "But Hoggle...and Ludo...and—"

"Gone.  All gone."

"Not possible.  I saw them after you were defeated," Sarah said, slightly confused, but quite willing to believe that Jareth was lying through his pointy teeth.  "More than once."

"You understand so little about the power of wishes and your own mind, Sarah.  You wished to see them, yes? Each time, you wished it."

"So? They came, didn't they?"

"You wished to see them, so you saw them.  That does not mean that they actually came.  What you saw was just your imagination.  In effect, you wished their images to yourself, not their real selves."

"That would mean that... that I haven't seen them since..."

"Since you left them at my castle, yes."

Sarah shook her head desperately.  "No.  I don't believe you.  Why should I believe you?"

Jareth shrugged indifferently.  "It is entirely immaterial whether or not you believe me.  You wished to know what has happened, and I'm telling you.  You just need to decide whether or not I would have a good reason to lie."

"You _always_ have a reason to lie!" she exclaimed.

"As I said," he continued, a slight edge to his voice, "you are under no obligation to believe me.  Neither am I under any obligation to speak to you, so if you're going to keep badgering me and questioning every single word I say, I believe I'll just stop talking and go back to sleep."

"I could throw you out of my room," she muttered.  The words were under her breath, but Jareth must have had had extraordinarily sharp ears, for he caught every single word.

"Threatening the same thing twice is rather ineffective.  I actually was not going to mention it, but you _can't_ throw me out of your room."  The smirk upon his lips was a pale imitation of its former glory, but it was there nonetheless.  "What was it you said? Ah, yes.  'Unless you want to, you don't have to go outside again until the snow's stopped.'  I believe that was it.  And frankly, I _don't_ want to."

"But I said that when I thought you were an innocent owl," Sarah replied stubbornly.  "I don't see why I should be held to that."

"A promise is a promise, Sarah, dear."

She crossed her arms.  "And a jackass is a jackass, no matter what clothes he puts on."

"A bit bitter, are we? Listen, do you want me to explain or not?"

"...Yes," Sarah said grudgingly.  "Please go on."

"So the Labyrinth is inaccessible, if it even still exists.  I've been forced to spend the last two years as an owl."

"Was that necessary?" Seeing his raised eyebrow, she hastily amended her words.  "I mean, I know that you're a bit...unusual, and you wouldn't look very good in a suit, but surely getting a job and making some money in the human world is preferable to... um, eating mice to survive?"

"As much as I would enjoy toiling away like a dead-eyed drone in this pathetic excuse for a world," Jareth replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm, "that wasn't an option.  I do not have control over my form, so when I say that I was forced to spend two years as an owl, I mean that I was not physically able to regain this form."

"You regained it easily enough tonight."

"Because you said the right words."

"Huh?"

"You made a wish to know why it seemed like the owl could understand you.  For the last two years, I've waited around your window as much as I could in the hopes that you would see me and wish something of the sort so I could be myself again, but you never did.  And then you just stopped seeing me at all," he said, every word as harsh as a bullet.

"What do you _mean_?" Sarah asked, confused and not a little upset.  "I always saw the owl, until you stopped showing up, and then I didn't see you again till tonight."

"Stopped showing up, you say," Jareth replied in disgust.  "I was always here.  You lost your faith in the Labyrinth and in me, and you stopped even seeing that I was _right there_."  He pointed to the branch, mere feet away from him.

"How could I have lost my faith in you when I didn't even remember you?" Sarah cried, an ache in her chest.  "Until I saw you tonight, I wasn't even aware that you existed!"

"And whose fault is that?" he asked.  His voice was quiet, but the tone was infinitely more terrible than it would have been had he been screaming and ranting.

"I don't _know_! Do you honestly think I would completely forget you all on my own?" She shook her head wildly.  "You made too much of an impression for that."

"You protest and you protest, but the fact remains that you did forget me," he sneered.  "And I can assure you that I certainly did not slip you any more peaches."

"Rot in hell!" she snapped.  "I don't know what happened, and I certainly don't need to defend myself to you, you bastard! You're the one who stole my baby brother and tried to drop me in the Bog of Eternal Stench.  I don't owe you _anything_."

"You owe me a warm room for the duration of the storm."

"Besides that."  She clenched her fists.

"Sarah," he said, his voice quiet again, "do you remember what I told you about the power of your own mind and wishes?"

"I fail to see how that has any bearing here," she replied stiffly.

"It's the exact same thing.  You wished your friends to you, and... you wished me away," he said slowly, almost as though the words pained him.  "You didn't want to remember me, so you pushed me out of your mind and replaced me with something else."

"I..." she shook her head dazedly.  "You really think that's what happened?"

"Eaten any magic fruit lately?"

"No."

"Then, yes.  That's what happened."

Sarah stared at her feet.  "So it's true.  You really lost everything because of me."  

"Damn straight I did.  As if it weren't bad enough that you defeated me, you had to add insult to injury and forget about me."

Sarah started to cry.  She didn't mean to, and she certainly didn't want to cry in front of _him_, but she was exhausted and there was only so much she could take.  Assuming that everything he said was true, and despite her brave words, she believed him, she really had destroyed his life.  She roughly wiped her flannel sleeve over her eyes, but the tears wouldn't stop coming.

When she looked up again, her eyelashes spiky and wet, he was gazing at her with an entirely new expression on his face.  "Oh, dear," he said, in a voice that was more genuine than anything she would have believed could come from him.  "I seem to have let my frustration get away with me."

"Yeah, you're good at that," she sniffled.

Jareth sighed.  Slowly, he stood up and walked across the room, sitting down next to her on the bed.  She stared straight ahead, still fighting to control her emotions.  

"Sometimes," he said, also staring ahead, "I forget how young you are and that you're not as used to me as my goblins were.  I could yell at them and throw them from the castle ramparts for the hell of it, and they would lap it up and come back for more."

"...Fine," she said shortly, her voice rough and unsteady.  She didn't want to say anything at all, but he had clearly been waiting for a response.

"Nor am I used to women and their... emotions."  He said the word as though it were an anathema.  "The only females in the Labyrinth besides those pesky fairies are goblins like Agnes the Junk Heap.  They don't... cry."

"Go to hell," Sarah muttered.

"Dammit, Sarah," he snapped, "I'm trying to _apologize_."

She let out another shuddery breath.  "Well, you suck at it."

He sighed in exasperation, but when he spoke, his voice was surprisingly gentle.  "I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry too," Sarah whispered.  "I wanted my baby brother back, but I wasn't trying to destroy your life."

Jareth leaned back and gazed at the ceiling.  "I know."

The two of them sat in silence for several minutes, side-by-side, and neither quite sure where to go from there.


	3. three

Though the peaceful silence was a welcome change from the nasty bickering, after a few minutes, Sarah began to feel uncomfortable.  It just didn't seem right to be sitting on her bed with the Goblin King, not at odds for once.

"So," she ventured, "you've been outside my window for two years?"

He shrugged.  "Where else did I have to go?"

"But I wasn't... boring?"

"Occasionally."  

Sarah snorted.  "You're right about not being used to women.  You were supposed to lie there."

"And you were supposed to let me finish.  You were occasionally boring, yes, but the rest of the time, you more than made up for it."  A mischievous smile played on his features.

For her part, Sarah could only blush, thinking of all of the times she had forgotten to close the shades while dressing, or the times she had put on loud music and danced wildly around the room in her underwear.  "Um..." she managed, "...I, um..."

"I quite enjoyed watching you while you slept, actually."

She got the feeling that her face at that moment must have been priceless.  "_Sleeping_?" she choked.  Her tone of voice conveyed her meaning more clearly than any words ever could have.  

He laughed, a deep, rich sound.  "Well, of course, I enjoyed those other times too.  A man would have to be both cold-blooded and dead to not relish the view outside your window.  But," he sighed, "when you sleep, you're so peaceful.  The moonlight shines on your face, and all of your worries and cares are hidden away.  Most of the time, you just lie there and breathe quietly and deeply, but sometimes, you toss and turn.  You kick the covers away from you, and I'm reminded of just how much is going on inside that pretty head of yours.  It's really quite enthralling."

If she had been red before, by now she was a deep crimson; her face felt like it was about to burst into flame.  She drew her knees up towards her chest in a protective gesture.  "Well, ah, thank you, I suppose? That was certainly, er, poetic."

"I've had a good deal of time to think about it."

"You shouldn't be thinking about my sleeping habits."

The corner of his mouth turned upwards slightly.  "I also paid a good deal of attention to the times when you were awake, if that helps at all.  You're really an exquisite dancer."

Sarah groaned and buried her burning face in her knees.  "Go to hell," she mumbled.

"You've said that already," Jareth _tsk_ed.  "In any case, you clearly are no more used to men than I am to women.  I am not an expert, but I believe that the correct response would have been 'thank you.'"

"Why are you _doing_ this?" she asked, raising her head, but not able to meet his eyes.  

"Doing what?"

"Is it revenge for beating you and making you spend two years as an owl? Or is it the loss of the Labyrinth you're angriest about?"

"What _are_ you blathering on about?"

"Because if it's one of those, I'm _sorry_, all right? I didn't mean to make any of that happen, and I feel bad about it, so there's no need to come in here and do this to me!"

"_Sarah_!" he exclaimed.  "Good god, girl, make _sense_!"

She managed to look at him now, a proud tilt to her chin.  "You don't understand?"

"How could I? Your logic would confound a rock."

"I can't believe you don't understand!"

"I can't believe that you won't explain."  He tilted an eyebrow, raising her ire even further.

"This is ridiculous.  Why am I even doing this?" Sarah jumped to her feet and started to pace back and forth.  "Why are you even _here_?"

He attempted to follow her jerky movements with his eyes, but groaned a moment later.  "You're giving me a headache."

"Yeah? Well, _good_!"  She glared at him with her hands on her hips, but did stop walking back and forth.

Jareth groaned.  "I am at my wits end.  I'm tired, I'm homeless, and I don't even know how long you're going to let me keep my human form, so will you _please_ at least have the decency to stop glowering and tell me what you're prattling on about?"

"_You_, you idiot! I'm 'prattling on' about you!"  When he just sat there calmly and gazed at her expectantly, she pressed her lips together irritably.  "I guess I shouldn't be surprised.  You tried the same thing in the Labyrinth, after all, and—"

He held up a hand.  "'Make sense' are the key words here.  I know it's difficult, but do try."

Sarah sat down in her desk chair, crossed her legs, and folded her arms.  It was simple enough to say the word, but not so simple to keep from blushing again.  "Seduction.  That's what it is.  You dragged me into that bubble and tried to seduce me into forgetting about Toby.  You tried again, right before I beat you.  And now, you're doing the same thing again, but I don't know what it is you want this time.  If I'm stuck keeping you in here until the storm stops, the least you could do is to stop messing with my mind."  She looked at him defiantly.  

For a short moment, he was stunned into silence, but it was over all too soon.  As she watched in angry disbelief, he started laughing.  When it seemed as though he was about to catch his breath, the laughter momentarily subsided, but then he started cackling again.  He laughed so hard that tears welled up in his strange eyes and he fell over backwards on the bed and lay there, gasping for breath.

"Stop it!" Sarah sputtered, now truly enraged.  "Stop it right now!"

Jareth wiped his streaming eyes, still snorting quietly to himself.  "God, I do love you, Sarah," he said affectionately.  Then he started laughing again.

Sarah froze.  Had she just heard what she thought she had? Though she didn't want to admit it, there was nothing else it could have been.  The words had been clear as a bell.  She bit her lip, not having the slightest clue as to how to react to that.  If she took it seriously, he would no doubt mock her mercilessly, and if she reacted to it as a joke, which, she thought was the much more likely possibility, she ran the risk of offending him.

Finally, seeing that he was still laughing and that she had to say something, she asked angrily, "And just what is so funny?"

Jareth seemed to fight for control and the incessant laughter quieted.  "Trying to seduce you?" he said, his voice still quite amused.

"Yes!" she exclaimed.

"I wouldn't say I was trying, exactly.  I'd say I was succeeding admirably."  He sniggered to himself, but managed to keep a straight face for the most part.

"You were not!"

"'I don't know what it is you want this time'?" he quoted.  "Well, the same thing I wanted last time, quite frankly, though I wasn't entirely sure until you straddled my legs and took my boots off."

"You—" Sarah's eyes widened almost comically.  "You were unconscious!"

"For the most part, yes."  Jareth smiled toothily.  

She let out a wordless cry of anger and lunged from her chair.  Once she was on her feet, however, she paused, not quite sure of what to do; should she beat him mercilessly or just order him out of her room? Or, a small voice inside her head whispered, should she oblige him?

The choice was taken away from her when Jareth grabbed her hand and smiled up at her appealingly.  "Temper, temper, Sarah, dear."

"I'm not your dear!" she almost shouted.

"Aren't you?"  As he continued, she fumed silently.  "You see, you don't have much choice in that particular matter.  I may not be your dear, though I wouldn't bet my life on that, but you certainly are mine, and the more you protest, the cuter I find it."

"So what do you want? You say it was the same thing you wanted last time, which was to steal my baby brother.  Do you really want the little screaming whiny brat that badly? He's right across the hall, and he's going through Terrible Twos, so you're quite welcome to him."  She pulled her hand out of his coldly.

Jareth sighed.  "And we're back to the baby brother again.  Sarah, he couldn't be further from my mind."  He grabbed her hand again, and wouldn't let it go this time, no matter how she pulled.  "Yes, I stole the baby.  Because you wished it.  _You._"

"If you had really cared about me, as you claim," she shot back, "you would have returned him when I asked it of you two minutes later."

"What?" he asked in mock surprise.  "And deprive me of the chance of getting to know you? Never!"  Seeing that her face wasn't softening at all, he sighed and dropped the charade.  "Whether you believe it or not, Sarah, what I offered you was real.  I wasn't going to turn the baby into a goblin – I had far too many of those to deal with as it was.  If you had agreed to what I asked, I would have given him right back to you to deal with as you saw fit.  Whether you chose to return him to his parents or to raise him as my heir, I would have agreed without a moment's hesitation."

"Why should I believe you?" she whispered.  "You're the King of Lies."

"No, that's Satan.  I'm just the former Goblin King."

"Jareth..." Sarah said.  "I'd _like_ to believe you, but—"

The rest of her words were cut off as he pulled her down to him and kissed her firmly on the lips.

When the kiss ended, and she dazedly pulled away, the first words out of his mouth were, "Do you believe me _now_?"

"I...I..."  Sarah blinked, trying to reorder her jumbled thoughts.  It felt as though her brain were shrouded in a heavy fog, but it wasn't a bad feeling.  "...I don't know.  I'm...confused."

He stood up, towering above her.  Being suddenly reminded of how much larger than she he was, and how much stronger, even in his weakened state, she shrank back slightly.

This time, though, his grip was gentle: his hands barely grazed her shoulders as he leaned down and kissed her again.  Of course, this did nothing to help clear the fog in her head, but deep inside her heart, she admitted to herself that it wasn't entirely unwelcome.  Still fighting, though, her hands clenched into fists by her side.

"I've spent two years," he said quietly, his breath a gentle breeze against her cheek, "standing outside, staring in, and wishing that you had accepted me.  I decided that losing everything was worth it if there was the slightest chance that you would have me.  You were the first thing I'd ever seen that I felt was more interesting and more fun than what I had been doing.  So instead of trying to find ways to regain the Labyrinth, I sat on that damned branch.  When you stopped seeing me there, I thought that I might die."

"But _why_?" Sarah cried.  "Why...?"

Jareth smiled, but it was a different smile than his arrogant sneers.  "Isn't it obvious, you silly girl?"

That final smile did it.  She had lost.  She'd fought it, she'd tried to ignore her attraction to him, even to the point of pushing memories entirely from her head, but it was too late now.  He had won, and she thought that deep down, she had always known that he would.

When he leaned down to her this time, she kissed back, flinging her arms around him with the restrained desire of two years of waiting.  His arms circled her back more slowly, but they held her tightly.  

Suddenly, Sarah pulled back and looked at him intently.

"What?" he whispered.  "What is it?" It was clear that he was expecting her to say that she'd changed her mind, that she wanted him to leave.

Instead, Sarah smiled.  "It was you," she said, eyes aglow with discovery.  "That's why I saw your eyes this afternoon.  It was you."

"What was me?"

"What I was looking for all along, only I... I didn't know it."

This time, the kiss didn't end.

***************************************************

It was later, much later, though neither could have said accurately how long it had been.  The only thing Sarah knew was that for the first time, she felt complete.  She laughed happily.

Lying by her side, Jareth grumbled, "Keep it down, woman.  I'm trying to sleep."

Unwilling to let his sleepy mutterings sour her good mood, she rested a hand on his flat stomach and said, "And to think, I was trying to replace you with math."

Though he fought to keep the dour expression on his face, he lost and wound up grinning widely.  "I would hope I'm at least slightly more entertaining than calculus."

"Oh, much," she said enthusiastically and planted a kiss on his forehead.  "Jareth," she said, as she dropped her weary head to lie pillowed on his chest, "why me? Why did you pick me?"

Though she couldn't see it, she could almost sense the put-upon look that he shot at the ceiling.  "Does the _why_ of it matter? I told you already, some things just _are_."

"But I want to know!"

"You're not going to let me get any sleep, are you?"

"Not as such, no."

He laughed under his breath.  "Fine, fine.  I don't think it can be said that I picked you, exactly, though."

"Well, I certainly didn't pick you, and there had to be _some_ sort of picking going on."

"At first, I saw you as a momentary amusement.  Watching idiots try to pick their way through the Labyrinth grew tiresome.  I decided that at least you were somewhat attractive, so despite the fact that I was expecting to watch you fail, watching you was not much of a chore.  It wasn't until you told those hands to let you fall and landed in the Oubliette that I began to take any real notice.  Any ordinary nitwit would have asked to go up, but you had already grasped the nature of the Labyrinth.  Just because up is up and down is down doesn't mean that down is necessarily the wrong way."

"What would have happened if I'd asked to go up?" she asked drowsily.

"The door through which you had walked would have closed behind you and in front of you would have been the entrance to the Labyrinth.  You would have had to start all over again, so you see, even though I sent Hoggle to take you back to the beginning anyhow, you made the right choice.  That was unusual and most interesting."

"So you liked me because I chose down?"

"I wouldn't phrase it like that.  I didn't even realize that I thought of you as possibly something more than an amusement until Hoggle showed so much concern on your behalf."

"Why's that?"

"I realized that I was jealous," he said, sounding embarrassed.  "That scared me, and I decided that I should do whatever was necessary to get rid of you.  I couldn't have anyone coming in and destroying my carefully constructed chaos of a life, could I?"

"How romantic."

"Well, I didn't get rid of you, did I?"

"You certainly tried, didn't you?"

She could hear the smile in his voice when he replied.  "As soon as I saw you inside the bubble I'd constructed to distract you, I knew that I couldn't destroy you.  All I could do was hope to delay you enough so that the clock would strike thirteen and both you and your baby brother would be mine."

"So that's why you sent your armies out?"

"Of course.  Once I saw you in that ridiculous dress, getting you out of the way was no longer an option."

She raised her head.  "I _beg_ your pardon?"

Jareth started laughing soundlessly.  "Oh, god... those sleeves... the puffiness... oh, it was too much..." He gestured helplessly.

Sarah glared down at him.  "I _liked_ that dress."

"Are you insane? You could have swept the floor and directed traffic at the same time with that... _thing_."

She crossed her arms and pouted.  "You're a jerk."

"Of course I am.  Tell me honestly, would you think much of me at all if I were any other way?"

"...I guess not," she admitted.  "You are who you are, Jareth."

He made a noise of agreement.  "However, I wasn't truly mesmerized by you until you rejected me that last time.  Then I knew that I had to have you, one way or another."

"You mean, when I defeated you?"

"You like saying that, don't you? Yes, then.  You were so strong and confident, and yet, so uncertain.  I felt as though I had just missed saying the right words to make you mine."

"And then you spent the next two years stalking me in the form of an owl?"

Jareth chuckled.  "More or less."

"Mmmm."

"And what of you, Sarah? You make me analyze my feelings for you.  I think I ought to ask the same in return."

She laughed.  "That shouldn't take too long.  I hated you."

"Clearly."

"But I was also fascinated by you.  You were so...so..."

"Handsome?" he supplied.  "Charming? Wonderful? Everything you could want in a man?"

"...Not quite," Sarah said.  "'Flamboyant' is more the word I was looking for."  At his frown, she laughed.  "But, yes, you were good-looking... kind of like a wild animal.  You were dangerous, and I wanted that."

"Wild animal? Am I supposed to be flattered?" he said mockingly.

She shrugged, growing used to his affectionate mockery.  "As you wish.  Jareth..." she said, suddenly serious.  "I have a question."

"Anything."

"What will happen now?"

"Well, I would hope that we would go to sleep.  I'm quite tired."

"No, I mean...now.  Not right now, but _now_.  You don't belong in this world, and even if you could reclaim the Labyrinth, I wouldn't belong there.  So what now?"

"I confess," he said, the smile fading from his face, "I was rather hoping you would come with me.  Not immediately, of course, but once I _do_ get the Labyrinth back."

"I have a life here, Jareth.  How could I be happy in a world of goblins? It wouldn't work."  Sarah shook her head.  "It's not that I don't...don't... care about you, but I just don't see how...it could work."

He sighed.  "Listen, Sarah, all I ask is that you not make any decisions yet.  The storm has stopped and when day comes, I'll leave.  I'll only come back when I am King again.  I ask only that you not make your decision till then."

"_Only_?"

He grinned tiredly.  "Very well.  I also ask that you not let any other men touch you or even look at you in a way I would deem inappropriate.  For their protection, of course," he added, "because otherwise, I would have to dispose of them immediately."

"How kind," she said dryly, but she couldn't help but feel good at the knowledge of his protectiveness.

"Do you agree to wait till then?"

Not yet ready to answer, she reached out and touched the medallion on his chest.  "What is this?" she asked, idly tracing the silver circle inside the warped golden triangle.  "You've always worn it... What does it mean?"

"You didn't answer my question," he said sternly.

"Just... give me a few minutes, all right?"

He nodded in grudging assent.  "The medallion is just...symbolic, really.  It represents me, and I think that it quite suits me."

"It certainly is dramatic."

He reached a hand up and drew the medallion over and off his head.  "You have it, then."

"What?" Sarah gasped.  "What do you mean? You can't give it to me!"

"Why on earth not?" Jareth rejoined calmly.  "It's a piece of gold and silver, nothing more, and if it would remind you of me while I'm gone, I would gladly part with it.  Take it, Sarah.  I give it freely."

Hesitantly, she reached out and the medallion changed hands.  It was heavier than she expected.  

"What should I do with it?" she asked shyly.

"Whatever you wish, of course."

"I'll..." she glanced around, her gaze finally alighting on a decorative box her real mother had sent her years and years ago.  Until now, it had been sitting unused on her desk.  "I'll keep it safe in that box," she decided, climbing over him and out of bed, ignoring his "oof"s.  

Gently, she placed the medallion in the soft, cushioned depths of the box, arranging the chain neatly, and closed the box, locking it with its elegant silver key, which she placed on the desk next to the box.

"Answer my question now?"

Sarah turned back to Jareth to find him sitting up, watching her closely.  "I..."  He blinked, and in that moment, she saw the emotion under the surface that he was striving to cover up.  Fear.  At the knowledge that this proud, arrogant man was afraid that he might lose her, what was left of her defenses melted.  "Of _course_ I'll wait!" she cried, flinging herself back into his open arms.

Neither of them got any more sleep that night.

**********************************************

Of course, day came, as day always does.  Never before, though, had Sarah viewed the sun peeking over the snow-covered horizon with such trepidation.  Jareth, however, accepted it with a stoicism she had not known he possessed.  Though she didn't want to let him, he sat up and pulled his clothing and boots on, and clasped his cape with a flourish.

Sarah stood up and looked at him wordlessly.

"Don't worry," he said confidently.  "I'll come back."

"Look at you!" she cried.  "You look like a single strong wind could break you in half! How can you expect to find a way back to the Labyrinth like this."

He looked at her.  "Sarah, your words did this to me.  Your words can undo it."

Despair filled her.  "You have so much faith in me.  I don't understand it.  I'm not even totally sure that you're real!"  Jareth looked alarmed.  "I mean, I believe in you, of course, but... why do I have such control over you? It doesn't make sense.  No one can have so much control over another real being.  It just doesn't make _sense_."

He sighed, though his head was still held high.  "That's not something I can make you believe or mistrust with a kiss, Sarah.  Whether I exist or not is a truth you will have to find for yourself.  But," he added, with only a hint of a grin, "if you ever need to know for sure, you can just look in the box and see if my medallion is still there.  That would straighten your mind out pretty quickly, I'd say."

Tears came to her eyes.  "How can you be so light-hearted about all of this? I only just found you, and now you're going to leave and I might never see you again!"

"Keep faith," he said quietly.  "Keep faith, Sarah."

Jareth ran a hand along her cheek right before she flung herself into his arms.

Pressing her cheek against his chest and listening to the beat of his heart, Sarah closed her eyes and whispered quietly, "You have power over me.  You do."

When she pulled back to look at him one last time, her eyes widened in shock.  She was looking at the old Jareth, the one she had known and battled two years before.  He was once again the strong, magnetic, _alive_ man she had defeated, and he was looking down at her with a delighted grin on his face.

"You did it, Sarah!" Ecstatically, he twirled her around.  "I told you that you could do it!"

"I did it..." she whispered, his infectious smile catching.  "My words..."

"Now, please, dear," he said with mock sternness, "don't go and do something stupid like saying the words that got me into this mess to begin with."

"Not for the world!" she cried.  "I swear it!"

He leaned down and kissed her one last time.  "It's time, Sarah.  Say the words."

"Will I really ever see you again?"

"Don't doubt it."  He turned around and flung open the window, letting in a blast of wintry air.  "Say the words."

"I wish..." she choked, hanging her head, but sniffled once and continued.  "I wish that you were back where you belong."

A whisper of "...that's my girl," reached her ears, but by the time she looked back up, hoping for one last glimpse of him, Jareth was gone and an owl was soaring away into the rising sun.

With him gone, the color seemed to be gone from her room.  Slowly, mechanically, she closed the window and latched it.  She turned around, trying to decide what she should do now.  

Sleep seemed the best option, but she just couldn't close her eyes.  She tossed and turned, her nervous gaze continuously returning to the box.  Within that box lay the only proof that this night had ever really happened.  Within that box was either a golden medallion...or nothing.

Sarah exhaled nervously and hopped up from the bed, walking over to the box and running her hands over it.  This was the only way she'd ever know if Jareth was real or not, if her hopes could ever come true or if they were doomed from the start.

Slowly, she reached down and picked up the key.  She turned it over and over in her hands, relishing its cool, solid feel.  She looked at the key.  Then she looked at the box.  Then the key again.  Then the box again.

Suddenly, her mind was made up.  With an impish grin, she unlocked her bedroom door, strode down the corridor, into the bathroom, and flushed the key down the toilet.

Sarah nodded, satisfied.  She walked back to her room and relocked the door.  Opening her bottommost desk drawer, she set the box safely, securely in there.

With that, she returned to her still-warm bed, where she fell asleep quickly and easy with a smile on her face, dreaming that a white owl was watching over her from outside the window.

~~~~~~~~_fin_~~~~~~~~

A/N: Thanks for reading, everyone! I hope you enjoyed it (though I'm sure that it's a bit shorter than some of you would like).  Not to worry, there very well might be a sequel to this... In fact, I'm pretty sure there will be, as soon as A) school lets up a tad, B) I've done a bit more and hopefully finished one or two of my other FF.Net stories, and C) I've worked a bit on my original story... I feel guilty having strayed from it for so long to write fan fiction! 

~signpost


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